Feminism Anglophone Hegemony in Gender, Place and Culture

7/29/2019 Feminism Anglophone Hegemony in Gender, Place and Culture

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/feminism-anglophone-hegemony-in-gender-place-and-culture 1/5

Guest Editorial: Does Anglophone hegemony permeate

Gender, Place and Culture?

MARIA DOLORS GARCIA RAMON*, KIRSTEN SIMONSEN** &DINA VAIOU†*Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

**Roskilde University, Denmark†National Technical University of Athens

Abstract This editorial is seen as a comment on the on-going concern expressed inseveral Anglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamerican productionand its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate. We examine theextent to which Angloamerican dominance is equally true with regard to feminist

geography, by looking at how/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals with thisbias. Finally we forward some suggestions for positive action towards enhancing theinternational character of the journal.

In the past few years there has been an on-going concern expressed in severalAnglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamericanproduction and its role in formulating the terms of international academicdebate. It is not an exaggeration to argue that, in ‘international’ writing spaces,there is an almost undisputed dominance of Angloamerican geography, in termsof theoretical approaches, topics and ways of ‘doing geography’. To what extent isthis also true about feminist geography? In this editorial we try to look athow/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals (or not) with this bias in itschoices of articles, topics raised and books reviewed/presented.

It is widely recognised that Angloamerican feminist geography has openedpaths in the field and has shaped the terms of research and debate for over twodecades. In this context, it is difficult to approach the issue of hegemony in termsof a simple binary (Angloamerican ‘other’), since many feminists from other partsof the world have actively participated in these debates. A more interestingquestion is perhaps what kinds of feminist geographies have been possible within

Correspondence: Prof. M.D Garcia Ramon, Department of Geography, Autonomous Universityof Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain; e-mail: [email protected]; Prof. KirstenSimonsen, Department of Geography and International Development Studies, RoskildeUniversity, PO Box 260, 4000 Roskilde-DK, Denmark; e-mail: [email protected]; Prof. Dina Vaiou,Department of Urban and Regional Planning, National Technical University of Athens,Patission 42, 106 82 Athens, Greece; e-mail: [email protected]

Gender, Place and CultureVol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1–5, February 2006

ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-0524 online/06/010001-5q 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09663690500530867



the ‘power geometries’ instituted by the practices of a journal like GPC and whatnew practices could destabilise a uni-directional perspective on what constitutesfeminist geographies today.

First, we take a short look at publications in GPC from a quantitativeperspective.1 Out of a total of 242 authors of articles and viewpoints, only 19 arenot based in Angloamerican universities2 or research centres, that is 7.3% of thetotal, and they come from France, Canada, Spain, Finland, Hong Kong, India,Israel, Nigeria, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Thailand, Sri Lanka andUganda. US and UK authors represent around 64% of the total (both countries arequite evenly represented), and Anglophone Canada stands out with almost 19%.The share of non-Angloamerican authors does not increase through the 12 years of publication, quite the opposite: when data are grouped in three-year periods, theearliest period contains around 6%, the second one 17%, the third one 10% and the

last one only 6% of such contributions.From the analysis of book reviews it appears that, out of 320 books reviewed,

only seven were written in a language other than English, that is 2.19%. 3 Non-Angloamerican reviewers are around 5%, coming from seven different countries(three from Europe, three from Asia, and one from Latin America).

Looking at the bibliography in the articles, we observe that Angloamericanauthors are not using sources written in languages other than English andreferences are massively monolingual (in English).4 English sources reach over95%, with marginal references in German, French and Spanish. In three of theissues examined there was not a single reference in a language other than English.The non-English references are mostly quoted in articles written by non-Angloamerican authors and by a few Angloamerican authors who write on studycases from outside the English speaking area.

The majority presence of Angloamerican authors, as is to be expected, goeshand in hand with the choice of topics and the theoretical elaborations which, to alarge extent, characterise the journal and, therefore, with the kinds of feministgeographies that are produced. GPC was launched at the high time of critique of grand narratives and the so-called cultural turn in Angloamerican geography andamong feminists. As a product of its time and space, it raised important questionsabout identity and difference; ‘race’, gender and sexuality; performativity andnegotiations of masculinity and femininity in different spatial contexts, inparadoxical, transitional and potential spaces; queer and (post)colonialdiscourse/s, (trans)nationalism, citizenship. The appearance of themes to dowith employment/work, globalisation, economic restructuring, (fear of) violence,grass-roots activism, have had a lesser and fluctuating presence in the journal. It is

in this balance of interests that the journal’s audience has also been shaped.The debate/s formed along these lines, on the one hand, might only to a limiteddegree grasp the problems and theoretical questions experienced in othercontexts. On the other hand, they may not excite to the same degree feministgeographers from elsewhere. Probably few readers of GPC would disagree withthis and our examples here are a further illustration. In the Nordic countries,feminist traditions developed in relation to the growth of the welfare state andthe high rate of female participation in the labour force. Nordic feminism(and feminist geography) therefore showed interest in issues of work andeveryday life, and in particular focused theoretical development around modesof rationality (e.g. of care and responsibility) translated between family, work andthe welfare state. The absence of Welfare State in the form that is known in the

2 M. D. Garcia Ramon et al.



north of Europe, as well as the importance of informal activities andarrangements, shaped different kinds of feminist responses in Greece and inSpain. Here care and everyday life, for example, are discussed in the context of ‘the family’, which covers a broad range of functions, including employment (infamily businesses), caring (by women of different generations), social andeconomic support, housing provision. Feminists in geography, as in otherdisciplines, have had to engage with the omni-presence of the family and unpackits multiple functions and meanings and its difficult encounters with, amongothers, issues of race/ethnicity and sexuality.

That different contexts produce different feminist traditions and debate/s, ingeography and beyond, is nothing new. What is at issue here, however, is theconstitution of GPC (along with most Anglophone journals) as an ‘international’writing space and the limited acknowledgement of its own locatedness (see, for

example, the reviews of different ‘branches’ of feminist geography). In thiscontext, knowledge from ‘other’ places is construed as exceptional, divergent andlocal and, as such, not producing ‘theory’, only ‘case studies’ (see e.g. Gregson et al.2003; Garcia Ramon, 2003; Society and Space, 2/2003; Geoforum, 35/2004). Thispower-knowledge system is further reproduced and strengthened through powerrelations and practices of regulation, inclusion and exclusion.

A significant factor in this power-knowledge system is language, not onlyconceived of in a literal sense, but also seen as a whole set of problems of translation at various levels of meaning. These problems are of course accentuatedin the current situation of inequality of languages, where the ‘international’writing spaces are in fact characterised by what Spivak (1993) calls‘monolinguistic superiority’. One side of this concerns the use, and frequentlyassumed inter-changeability, of concepts and categories, and the problems whicharise when these turn out to refer to different, maybe even incommensurable,meanings and practices in different contexts. Another, and related, side is aboutthe capabilities and the trajectories laid out by the very language in which wewrite. Even though we as academics go about in a plurality of more or lessoverlapping language communities, the linguistic resources at our disposal in ourfirst language and our everyday (academic and social) context do influence ourthinking.

Forthepurpose of illustration,we shall briefly consider thevery conceptof gender,including the distinctionbetween sex and gender. Manynon-English languages, ourown among them, have only one word and are therefore linguistically unable to actout the sex/gender distinction. It could be seen as a semantic problem that rendersus incapable of distinguishing between biological and social factors and criticising

biological determinism. There have been attempts by amongst others Swedishfeminist theorists, modelling after the English distinction, to introduce a secondterm to express such a reaction. We would however argue that the lack of adistinction should not necessarily be seen as a disadvantage. The sex/genderdistinction is a historical construct, developed for the specific political purpose of formulating a defence against sexism and biologism. Even though it actually didthe job, it is not a necessary condition for developing the argument. Many non-English-speaking feminists have managed to develop non-essentialist argumentswithout access to these particular terms. It would be possible to argue that they, inthat specific case, avoid thinking in the binary oppositions that Angloamericanpoststructuralist feminists so painfully struggle to deconstruct (see also Moi,1999).

Editorial 3



This example is just one of many that suggest that the asymmetric powergeometries disadvantage ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ alike—a fact that shouldencourage GPC to take positive actions to change this situation. The editorsthemselves suggested some ideas in a very hopeful editorial in June 2003. We addhere a few more.

First, the composition of the editorial board, itself not representative of thedifferent geographical traditions where gender research is going on in the world,could be revised to include people from other countries and geographicaltraditions. Since 1994, the Editorial Board, out of a total of 19, has had four peoplefrom outside the Angloamerican world (from France, Greece, Germany andFrench Canada), but three of them joined the Advisory Editorial Board in 1995.One new person from Singapore was included in 2000, but in 2003 three ‘foreign’members were removed from the Editorial Advisory Board without being

replaced. Nevertheless, it is good news that from March 2005 one of the editors is based in a non-Angloamerican university (Singapore). In addition, book revieweditors have always been based in Angloamerican universities. To sum up, wesuggest that the composition of the boards should be re-examined and thateditors, book review editors and the Editorial Board should play an active role inencouraging the submission of work from beyond the Angloamerican world.

Second, it would be good to open the journal further to languages other thanEnglish, a practice initiated already by the appearance in each issue of abstracts inSpanish. For example, authors could submit their papers in a language other thanEnglish, so long as referees for that language can be found to. If the article isaccepted for publication, then, its translation could be undertaken, paid for by theauthor (the cost of a good translation is one of the real problems faced by ‘foreign’authors). This needs a larger pool of referees, including nationality and languagesthey are able to read.

Third, it is both feasible and interesting to identify good books in otherlanguages and encourage their review for the journal. Along the same line, it isalso rewarding to identify good and representative articles published in journalsoutside Anglophone academia, to translate and publish them, perhaps in a specialsection of the journal. This policy could help highlight the valuable work beingconducted by researchers from different countries and traditions and toencourage dialogue and hybridisation among the diverse geographical traditionsworking on gender.

Notes

1. All the issues published from 1994 to June 2005 are included in this analysis.

2. We included Australia and New Zealand in this category but not the French-speaking universitiesin French Canada.

3. One in Swedish, one in French, three in German and two in Spanish.4. For this analysis we took a sample of issues: the first one of every two years, that is a total of six

issues.

References

Garcia-Ramon, M. D. (2003) Globalization and international geography: the questions of languages andscholarly traditions, Progress in Human Geography, 21(1), pp. 1–5.

Gregson, N., Simonsen, K. & Vaiou, D. (2003) Writing (across) Europe: on writing spaces and writingpractices, European Urban and Regional Studies, 10(1), pp. 5–22.

Moi, T. (1999) What is a Woman (Oxford, Oxford University Press).Spivak, G. C. (1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York, Routledge).

4 M. D. Garcia Ramon et al.



ABSTRACT TRANSLATION

¿La hegemonıa Anglosajona impregna Gender, Place and

Culture?

Resumen Esta nota editorial trata de un tema que en la actualidad es motivo depreocupacion en algunas revistas anglosajonas, la hegemonıa de la produccionanglosajona en geografıa y su papel crucial en la formulacion de los debatesacademicos internacionales. A traves del analisis de la revista Gender Place andCulture, se discute como esta situacion se da tambien en la geografıa feminista.Finalmente, se proponen una serie de acciones positivas para potenciar el caracterinternacional de la revista.

Editorial 5

Feminism Anglophone Hegemony in Gender, Place and Culture

Documents

Transcript of Feminism Anglophone Hegemony in Gender, Place and Culture